Its nothing major, but its annoying me now.

When i cold start her, she'll start fine and idle fine. However, the battery light is on and the lights are a bit dim. (Its undercharging, at around 11.8v).

If i then rev past around 2k, the light goes off, the lights go bright and it jumps to around 14.5v.

After that, idleing isnt so much fun. The vacuum gauge shows nearer 15inHG (normal idle is 20) The engine shudders, and feels like its on the brink of stalling.

Once ive been driving a long while and got the engine nice'n'warm she'll idle fine.

Really starting to bug me now. Fitted a replacement alternator, no help. New plugs. No help.

It better not be a lambda related, its THREE of the lil buggers in the last 6 months. Maybe im breaking them by hitting the floor. Hmmm..

you all suck at fault diagnosis

alex suggested ignition coils, and liam suggested ecu. any takers? will test on spare ecu when i have time off work.

coils, alex brining spare to stanford

mite be one of the most obvious and stupid answers but try a new alternator belt, it maybe loose even tho it doesn't squeel!

it is on the to do list, re-tension it. though its had new alternator and still did the same thing and it was tesioned properly then.

its ok to retension a belt but u shud always replace a belt when u replace an alternator!!

Gipsy Curse...its moved onto something different
Id say check the Battery voltages at all times till the light goes out...

MintySport said:

its ok to retension a belt but u shud always replace a belt when u replace an alternator!!

Click to expand...

I did, 6000mile ago - when i did the HG. its not having another one yet.

you got nice clean conectors on this new alternator? and battery?

earthing is fine on it all. as il show people at stanford

connectors were clean yeah. its an odd one.

arc said:

its an odd one.

Click to expand...

So's your face!


Errm yeah feel free to try my spare ECU that you've still got. If you wanna swap coils at some point when i return we can give that a whirl.

Apart from that i blame you fixing your temp gauge.

Ok, its not the alternator, and not the ECU.

Had the alternator i'd pulled off the car tested, and its 100% fine. Which means the one on it is defeintly fine as well - because changing it didnt help at all.

Also tried one of the spare ECU's, so thats that out of the question too.

Going to try running the car using two batteries later, see what that does - should show if its a battery fault or not. Plan to just link another battery to my battery using jump leads.

If that fails, chris - i wanna borrow ur coils tomorrow!

Hi,
Is the charge signal lead and connector in good clean condition, is it loose etc....?????

Thanks
Paul T

i dunno, but that wouldnt effect the running of the engine though.. would it?

also, running the car off two batteries (with the jump leads) didnt help.. so i suspect the battery is fine

Hi,
I think the ecu gets a voltage signal, so it may mess things up if the charge indicator has a dodgy connection..

Thanks
Paul T

Its not just the signal though, the voltage is jumping up. tested with the volt meter.

I wonder if its just a simple case of the battery being knackered. Could try a new one on tuesday and see.

You any idea where the charge wire is?

Hi,
Its normally a thin wire with a spade connector on the back of the alternator, just push/pull off sort of thing, check the wire hasn't started to get brittle from the engine heat......

Thanks
Paul T

i remeber that one, what u reckon would happen if i pulled the wire off?

ok, looking at diagrams now. that wire runs from the alternator to the instrument cluster - but no where else.

duff battery?

had a car once with the wrong bulb in the dash display(battery light)causing charging problems.turns out the bulb is the 'exciter'(oeer) for the charging system so it could be something on the signal circuit